


one day we'll be reborn (a little ripped and torn)

by crickets



Category: Lost
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-25
Updated: 2009-09-25
Packaged: 2017-10-05 02:52:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/36997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crickets/pseuds/crickets





	one day we'll be reborn (a little ripped and torn)

There's something about Alex that refuses to be broken, despite it all: the lie of her youth, a father who was nothing more than a thief in the night, robbing her, quite literally, from her cradle, an act that carved a path of constant betrayal that she would only come to recognize until the damage was done.

Richard, who is accustomed to forgetting, especially those things that are hardest to forget, sees himself in her more than he cares to admit. He hopes it won't stick, that maybe he got her out in time, that perhaps she's going to be okay, _normal_ even, _this time_. Richard tells himself these things, he suspects, foolishly.

_She_ was his one good deed, his one act that was more than a guiding force, a benevolent voice of reason directing the course of history. His one intervention.

But there is a price to be paid for such favors. And Richard, responsible as he is, does not tell her these things on the train past Montréal. He just promises her she'll see snow for the first time come winter, tells her that things will be different, a new life. Richard watches her face reflected in the window, tired but hopeful, resigned and still grateful, and not yet ready for the truth.

\--

At the first apartment, Alex starts to have nightmares. A gun pressed to her temple, a bond broken, warm blood, darkness. She screams.

Richard goes to her, shushes her, kisses her forehead, pushes her hair back, wipes the memory away with his touch, a memory of a moment that never actually happened, _not in this lifetime_. He rocks her until her breathing is rhythmic and steady, and then he leaves her again.

\--

In her waking hours, Alex is, in a word, giddy.

The world is new for her in a way that few can comprehend. She enjoys stores, the shelves full of possibilities, seeing where things come from, the exchange of money. On the island, things always just _arrived_. Clothes, food, weapons, whatever they needed, sometimes even people. Alex never called it magic. It was just how things were.

Richard takes care of things, gets them moved into a house far from town, helps her make it a home. And Alex? She tells herself that this is all about running away, about creating a place that feels as safe as those yellow houses did when she was a child, before she grew up enough to understand what it all meant. But experience tells her that there's something else, some other truth she has yet to get out of Richard, something he's holding back.

For now, she can live with it.

She's used to life this way.

\--

Alex picks up French from the locals. It's a bastardized version of the language spoken by the mother she never got a chance to know, but Richard can tell it makes her feel close to Danielle. He humors her, speaks to her when he cooks, describing each recipe in detail with a perfect Parisian dialect. He points out her mistakes as they talk over their meal, teaches her to recite his favorite quotes.

"How did you learn so well?" Alex asks him one night. They're out on the back deck in a twin pair of Adirondacks, wrapped tight in blankets, warm mugs of tea in their hands, watching the first snowfall of the season.

Richard remembers a girl, not unlike Alex herself. He was younger then, a student, wide-eyed and traveling for the summer and she was in a cafe, a cigarette in her hand, laughing at him. Who would have thought it would take so little? And then summer turned to autumn, and autumn to winter, winter to spring. And then one day her violent streak became too much, so Richard bought a ticket home.

She had been beautiful, _and terrible_, and though she had driven him away, Richard can only remember loving her.

It was the best year of his life.

"It was a long time ago," he says. And that is not untrue.

"Tell me," Alex says.

And he does.

\--

It's that same night when Richard hears screams from her room again. He's there at her side like always, and Alex can't go back to sleep.

"Tell me it never happens," she says.

"It never happens," he tells her, and he think she's finally getting it now.

She kisses him on the lips, her mouth wet and salty with tears. Richard can feel himself respond, his mouth tasting hers, his cock stiffening. His hands move to her shoulders and he bites her bottom lip gently before he pulls away.

He breathes her name, "Alex."

"I know," she says, anticipating every reason he will give. "Just," she settles down next to him once more, her head on his chest. "Stay with me?"

Of course, Richard does.

\--

Richard's phone never rings. So when it does, and he retreats to his room or outside the nearest door when the weather gets warm again, Alex knows who is on the other line.

"No," she hears him say one afternoon through the kitchen window. Alex is peeling potatoes over the sink and Richard's in the backyard. He doesn't know the window is open. "No, I haven't told her anything. We're fine here. Everything's fine."

Jacob likes to keep close tabs.

Later, over dinner, she jokes. "Why does he have to call anyway? Wouldn't you think a god could just appear out of thin air or... I don't know, communicate telepathically?"

Richard finishes off his glass of wine, pushes back his chair.

"Jacob's no god, Alex," he tells her. "I made that mistake once. I don't want you making it too."

\--

Alex often dreams of him.

They're together in a garden. It's humid-hot, like the island, and she's picking raspberries, red, juicy, sweet. She kneels beside him on the ground, pops one of the ripe fruits into his mouth, kisses his lips, her tongue tasting the fruit in tandem with his. He lets her, something he never does in life. And she slides into his lap, feels him hard against her. She groans, breaking their kiss, and her fingers go to his mouth, tracing over the stains along his lips.

The dream always goes like this. No matter how many times she dreams it, no matter how many times she tries to tell herself to change it.

It's then she remembers his face, watching over her as a toddler, a young girl, a teenager, now. Ever the same.

"How long?" she asks him then, wriggling as his cool fingers brush under the hem of her shirt, teasing her skin.

"How long what?" he asks, plucks another berry from the basket on the ground beside them, holds it to her lips.

"How long have we been here? Like this." Alex doesn't take the fruit. She won't. Not until she has her answer.

Richard laughs, also something he rarely does in life. "Forever, Alex," he says. "Forever."

She wakes up.

\--

Alex only asks about her mother once.

She's on the phone from work, an art gallery close by, telling him she'll have to stay late.

"Richard," she says, tentative, unsure.

"Yes," he answers.

"Did you know?" She asks. "About my mother, I mean. That she was looking for me."

Richard sighs, presses a hand into his pocket.

"I knew," he tells her. It was only a matter of time.

"And why didn't you...," she starts.

"I couldn't, Alex." He tells her. "There were rules."

"You broke them once."

Richard remembers. And she remembers too, every night in her dreams.

"That was different," he says.

"I know," she tells him, and then there's silence.

"Richard," she says.

"Alex?"

"Thank you."

\--

It's their second new year.

Last year, they drank champagne and watched the fireworks on television, a ritual that was entirely new to Alex. This year, Richard buys her a dress, tells her to find a party in the city, tells her to find someone to kiss at midnight. She goes out, but returns fifteen minutes before the countdown, sparkling in black.

Truth is, Richard expected as much. She's been quiet lately, something on her mind, some words unspoken. He doesn't ask her what happened, he just pours her a glass, turns up the volume, and they sit on the couch, waiting for a new day.

Alex, however, cannot wait.

She takes Richard's glass and sets it on the coffee table alongside her own, slides into his lap.

"Richard," she says.

His hands slide almost instinctively from her knees to her waist. "Alex?" he asks.

"Happy New Year," she says, her hand going to his cock, her lips at his neck.

He knows she's testing him, somehow, he can feel it. But instead of telling her no, instead of standing up, pushing her off of his lap, he cups her neck, covers her mouth with his, flips her underneath him on the couch.

She reaches for his buckle, and he for the zipper at the back of her dress. She unbuttons his shirt, and he slides his hands up her thighs, pulls at the material he finds underneath her dress.

It's all a flurry of motion, and Richard finds he cannot slow himself. His teeth graze lightly over her nipple and she arches back, her hips into his, and then they are joined. She's not a virgin, that much he knows, but still she gasps in that moment.

"Alex," her name comes from the back of his throat and she covers his lips with hers as they move together, the sounds of the television in the background, his thrusts in time with the chanting from the crowd, until they're coming to the tune of a song, Alex tensing and shuddering beneath him, Richard emptying himself inside her before collapsing against her stomach.

_We two have paddled in the stream,  
from morning sun 'til dine;  
But seas between us broad have roared  
since auld lang syne._

\--

In the morning, Richard finds her in the bathroom staring at herself in the mirror. He slips behind her, catches her waist in his hands, kisses her shoulder.

Alex is no dummy, and she knows last night wouldn't have happened if something hadn't changed. Richard wouldn't have let it. He almost didn't anyway. She leans back into him, still staring at her own face in the mirror, the curve of her lip, the freckles across her nose, the shape of her eyes, full of youth and inexperience.

She doesn't remember _not_ looking exactly like this in the past two years, maybe longer. But she's young and change is subtle, so she wasn't sure until last night.

"When were you going to tell me?" she asks him, and Richard looks up at her, his hands going to her shoulders. "That I'm like you now?"

He sees the tears in her eyes, looks down, exhales.

"I didn't have to, Alex," he tells her. "You already knew. You just... hadn't realized it yet. You needed the time. I wanted to give you that."

She turns to him, presses her forehead to his. He kisses her eyes, tasting her salty tears on his lips. Alex wants to kick and scream, to call him a bastard, to push him away when he wraps his arms around her. But she doesn't. Instead she feels relief, wants to ask him what it was like for him, wants him to tell her what this all means.

But, she suspects, as he leads her to the bedroom, he doesn't have all the answers.

\--

"I wanted to show you this," Richard tells her one afternoon, months later. It's a cloudy day and she's sitting on the steps outside, drawing sketches onto a blank page. He pulls something from his pocket, a photograph, weathered and old, black and white.

He hands it to her and lets her examine it for a moment as he sits next to her.

"That's me and..."

"The girl from the cafe," she finishes.

"You remembered," he says, smiles almost sheepishly.

"Of course," she says. She stares at the photograph, entranced. "You haven't changed much," she observes, "but still, _you look so young_," she tells him, touches his smiling face in the photograph. "Happy."

"I thought you might like to see something different," he says.

Alex reaches for his face, her fingertips trailing over his features, stopping at the corners of his eyes. "Here," she says. "I can tell here."

Richard closes his lids, lets her trace over his skin, lets her kiss his lashes. He can hear the wind pick up, a light rumbling in the clouds.

Alex laces her fingers through his.

"Let's go inside."

\- _fin_


End file.
